Children

I saw stars. They looked like glowing worms burning twisty patterns in the stucco ceiling. When was the last time I came that hard? Fuck.

The sound of Jam gagging jolted me awake more effectively than the orgasm itself. I was also pulling his hair kind of hard and I don’t think it was to pull him off me, if you know what I mean. He somehow soldiered through the moment of choking and successfully swallowed. I let go of him and he let go of me at the same time. His head popped up with a grin and he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

I blinked because the part of my brain that controlled talking wasn’t online yet.

“See, I told you,” Jam said to Flip. “Best way to have bus sex.” We weren’t in a bus so this must’ve been a reference to some conversation they’d been having while I was asleep? “No muss, no fuss.”

Flip laughed. “Barely. You almost made a bigger mess. I warned you he’d go off like a geyser.”

“No kidding.” Jam slapped me on the thigh.

I managed to get a word in edgewise. That word was: “Why?”

“Didn’t seem fair you were the only one not getting off,” Flip said with a yawn.

“Oh…” My groggy brain still wasn’t firing on all cylinders. What was the appropriate thing to say here? Thank you? Or, what the fuck made you think that was a good idea? Or both?

“Especially what with the way you were moaning,” Jam said with a snicker.

“But,” I managed. “But…”

Jam sat up, frowning, apparently sensing that I had some objection. “Don’t tell me that was too gay for you.”

“No, but.” But what? Nothing was making sense other than the fact that there was a total lack of tension from my neck downward.

“I mean, if it’s not too gay for me, how could it be too gay for the actual gay guy?” Jam climbed off the bed and stretched. His torso was long and rangy, kind of like Colin’s. He was wearing surf shorts and nothing else. He picked at his teeth with his thumbnail. “You guys got any floss?”

“In the bathroom,” Flip said, jerking his thumb in that direction.

Jam went to floss. I pulled the covers over myself as I rolled onto my side. “Um. Your idea or his?”

“Two beers ago I might’ve been able to answer that question,” Flip said. “You okay? You look concerned.”

“I make it a general policy not to have sex with anyone without discussing it with them first.” That came out quite reasonable sounding, I thought.

Apparently Jam could hear us perfectly well. “You count that as sex?”

“You don’t?”

He snorted. “Hell no.”

“That’d be gay,” Flip said without any apparent irony except for a little snort at the end.

I could almost see how that made sense from a heterosexual point of view–probably the closest I ever came to seeing anything from a heterosexual point of view, really. Flip had once described straight guys giving blow jobs in his frat house as no big deal. It hit home that he was telling the truth. This was no bigger a deal to them than any other tour prank.

Wait, did I tell you about the toothbrush prank? I might’ve decided to skip it because it’s kind of gross when you think about it. Over the years I’ve seen it pulled more than once. This is the prank where you steal a guy’s toothbrush from his toiletry kit, shove it up your ass, take a photo of it, and then put it back where you found it. And then a week or so later you tape the photo to the bus door.

I’d say getting a surprise blow job was better than that.

I felt at that point I had a choice to either accept that they meant me no real harm and treat it like nothing, in which case it would become nothing, or I could turn it into an issue that we could argue about all night and make all three of us into stress puppies for the foreseeable future. That hardly seemed worth it.

But then I figured out how to explain it so it made sense that “the gay guy” objected to the gayest thing of all, even if the two straight dudes didn’t. “Okay, sure, thanks,” I said. “But next time, now that you know how I feel about it, remember my policy, all right?”

“Sure,” they both chirped.

“Because, you know, I’m taken.”

Jam stuck his head out of the bathroom, a piece of green dental floss hanging from his mouth, which hung open. “Oh shit, you mean there’s someone at home you promised your dick to?”

“Call me a crazy romantic, but yeah.”

I could see the logic clicking into place in Jam’s head as his eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “Man. Hadn’t thought of that.” He ducked back into the bathroom and I heard the water run for a bit. Then he emerged sans floss. “My girl doesn’t care if the guys in the band touch my dick, only if other girls do. Hadn’t occurred to me you as an actual gay might have issues.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. An actual gay. Like I was some exotic bird or fish. A rare sighting of an actual gay in his natural habitat. “You let the guys in your band touch your dick?”

“Well, I mean not usually, but special circumstances and all.”

“Special circumstances?” I asked.

“None of us have got laid since you got sick,” Flip explained.

“Ah.” My conclusion was that I was not the only one who got stupid if I went too long without getting off. “Well, ask next time, okay?”

“Except there won’t be a next time because I’m not, like, a homewrecker, okay?” Jam said indignantly.

There was no way I could explain why, when he said that, I started to laugh hysterically. Partly because I suck at explanations. (Hell, here we are twenty five years later and I still can’t really explain it.) You know, it wasn’t like I could even start to explain the whole history with me and Ziggy and him. But mainly I couldn’t explain because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t talk. I could barely breathe.

I wrote a song called “Homewrecker” on the bus later, because the word had stuck in my head. Some people who don’t listen very hard probably think it’s a song about cheating or adultery. It isn’t, though. It’s about alcoholism.

—

—(P.S. Folks who enjoy my gay erotica/BDSM writing, The Prince’s Boy is being reissued in a collected volume. Pre-orders for the ebook are now live and the new cover art can be seen here: http://blog.ceciliatan.com/archives/2949 -ctan)

Comments 6

G wrote:

I actually like how this played out. I really don’t have a complaint – other than boys can be kind of dumb. I don’t even want to mar this approval by still wondering whether Ziggy needs to know or not. Does this fall into the category of an accident and/or misunderstanding, so no need to take it any further?

If it wasn’t Jam, I could see this as a “weird” or “funny” story (I know, we had issues with the “no consent” but I just can’t see the situation as that serious now that it has played out) – but it is Jam, and there’s a potential conflict if Ziggy isn’t told.

Daron, I, too, like the way you handled it with Flip and Jam: boundaries. And, I second the sentiment that Ziggy needs to be told.

May I suggest you ask Chris in confidence if he would consider it just a prank if he gave a gay guy a blow job. I would not expect him or any other Kinsey Scale Zeroes to be nonchalant about it.

This is a common fantasy in gay porn, that straight guys will have manual, oral or anal sex with gay guys. They key word here is “fantasy.” I do not believe either Flip or Jam to be purely heterosexual.

As I said, boys are weird. I could’ve lived my whole life without the toothbrush thing.

The words “I’m taken” made my heart flutter. When do we see Ziggy again? I miss him.

I still think he’s going to get pissy about this 1) because it’s Jam/Jay or 2) because of the way it happened or 3) both. That is if you tell him. I think (hope) you’ve learned enough by now to know that secrets have a way of coming out and it’s usually worse if you’ve been hiding something…

Dude, you’re talking to someone who’s been shoulder deep in a cow’s ass. It’s nearly impossible to gross out a vet. I just don’t get why you weirdos would put the toothbrush up your ass. Ouch? Girls just clean the toilet with your toothbrush and put it back. Same effect, no bristles.
*evil smile*

The photographic evidence was implied. Although your way sounds like a harmless (?) prank. For us it tends to be revenge and has a little “don’t fuck up again” note attached to it. Not that I’ve ever done that…

I think the thinking doesn’t go any deeper than “who wouldn’t want their dick sucked?” and me being gay is kind of secondary to that.

They don’t know the shit I put up with from Roger, or Ziggy for that matter. There are reasons why it might’ve freaked me out. But it didn’t, whereas waking up with Colin and Marilyn that one morning kinda did. My issues are just not in the same place as other people’s issues, maybe.

Right, and I think you would’ve been freaked out if it was just you and Jam in the room. Your trust in Flip let you accept they didn’t mean you harm, even if Jam’s thinking is pretty fucked up. You freaked out about Colin and Marilyn because you couldn’t remember what happened and you don’t really know Marilyn and well, she’s a girl. You kinda know Jam so I think that helped. Maybe?

Maggie you are not the only one that is squicked by this. In my mind, it was a form of rape…it was sex without consent. But guys & their dicks & sexual acts…it’s a different mind set I think. If you’re ok with the results of the the conversation afterwards Daron…then ok fine.

On whether or not to tell Ziggy…I’d tell him. Explain exactly what happened and then let it drop. You truly were not at fault and it was done without your knowledge & consent.

I think this whole scenario is interesting because in some ways it comes out of a subtle homophobia and a need to maintain a self identify of purely heterosexual. Jay/jam describes shares m/m blowjobs as not sex, because if it was sex than it would be a threat to his sexuality. Since it’s not sex he doesn’t need to get consent it is just a fun thing to do, like a prank.

But in reality Daron was just sexually assaulted. Ya he doesn’t feel like a victim nor is he that upset, so it’s ok to move on let’s not make a big deal out of it. But I really hope if Ziggy is upset with this he recognizes that jam forced sex on Daron without his consent, which is generally referred to as rape.

“Jay/jam describes shares m/m blowjobs as not sex, because if it was sex than it would be a threat to his sexuality. Since it’s not sex he doesn’t need to get consent it is just a fun thing to do, like a prank.”

You’ve hit on something about male sexual identity that is little known and less understood. For many (I do not know what ‘many’ is) men being perceived as straight is not enough. They must also be perceived as “not gay.” The two are different things.

Being perceived by others as straight requires no action or thought. It’s the default perception, I suspect in part because it’s probably right. Being perceived by others as “not gay,” at least in the 1960s when I was in high school, required affirmative action such as verbally bullying nerds (I was one) and verbally or physically bullying effeminate boys or others about whom there were rumors.

Being self-perceived as straight is more complex. Colin’s self-description as 90% straight puts his male/male sexual contact in the “this isn’t really who I am” category. Which probably suffices for being “not gay” as well.

My observations and experiences in college and the military led me to conclude that many, perhaps even most, of these bullies were terrified of being perceived by others to have failed the “not gay” test. And, consensual homoerotic play between men, in the presence of other men, was a vriation on the same theme. “See, I’m so confident of my heterosexuality that I’ll masturbate my friend/kiss my friend/suck my friend’s nipples/etc.”

My proctor (supervising psychiatrist) in my psychiatry residency said he would bet significant amounts of money that the vast majority of the homoerotic play guys were not Kinsey Scale Zeroes. And he wouldn’t bet aything that the overwhelming majority of the bullies were neither Kinsey Scale Zeroes nor Ones, because it was unfair. It was a slam dunk.

Almost forty years after high school I ran into one of the bullies at an airport. He apologized, explained that he had been married and ddivorced three times, and was finally in a committed relationship with another man.

Jam’s conclusion that it isn’t sex, therefore it’s not gay, is both understandable and wrong.

When I read the last entry, I was pretty upset by the lack of consent thing. But reading this… I have a number of thoughts.

One is that I want Daron to be able to define his own experiences. I say this as one who has had multiple non-con/dub-con encounters in my life, and when I say that I define my experiences as assault/other by how traumatized I feel, I mean it. It’s important to me to retain defining power of my experiences–does the story I tell myself in retrospect highlight or diminish my sense of being an agent in my own life?

I think that Daron has actually reclaimed his agency in a really meaningful way here by having the conversation he did with Jam and Flip. The way he dealt with it seems like it’s going to support his mental health, even if we as readers are really troubled by what happened.

I also wonder whether we are retconning our consent concerns–how much were Americans concerned with or even aware of date rape when this story takes place? That’s not to say that folks weren’t frequently traumatized by date rape or folks operating under an idea of “implied consent,” but that maybe Daron doesn’t identify the action as sexual assault in this context because date/acquaintance rape isn’t a conversation that’s happening in his community? I mean, this scene takes place at least 20 years after Against Our Will (which pretty much concerned itself with rape as a tool “used by all men to keep all women in control”) but I’m unclear about whether the discussion was filtering into the gay community at this point.

I don’t actually know; I was still in middle school (I think) at this point in the story. But Daron’s reactions in 2016 might very well be different than they would have been in 1992. Or whatever.

(Am nervous about posting this, but apparently felt strongly enough to want to chime in and write an essay…)

Please don’t be nervous about posting. We all benefit from others’ viewpoints and experiences.

I think we all forget sometimes what things were like 25 years ago, especially with regards to what was acceptable then that wouldn’t be now. I was in high school at this time in the story and I don’t remember hearing about date rape until college, when it was “watch your drink in bars.” (Not “how about you don’t drug people and have sex with them when they can’t give consent” as it should be)

I think Daron should be allowed to feel however he feels about this. I also wonder if this initial reaction will change once he’s had time to think about it. Who knows? It’s Daron and he usually has a clearer head after getting off so maybe it’s truly not going to be a problem for him. This time.

Well, look how many years it took for me to admit to myself that my ex-roommate was pretty much abusing me. But I don’t think this will be like that.

I do think I get to decide whether I was a victim or not. What I don’t get to do is tell other people whether what happened to *them* is or isn’t assault or whether they should or shouldn’t be upset by it.